


Pomegranate

by twopinkcarnations



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, F/M, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 19:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twopinkcarnations/pseuds/twopinkcarnations
Summary: A Hades and Persephone AU of Michael's kidnapping of Janet.





	Pomegranate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stargaysing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stargaysing/gifts).



He approaches her when he realizes she has finally strayed from her group of Janets. She was all alone, wandering the meadow as her counterparts collected specimens for their database.

“Ah, so you’re a Janet,” he says.

She’s never seen this man in black before, but he looks impressed. And she might not be human, but his complimentary tone flatters her.

“I am! I know everything in the universe!”

“Surely not everything!”

He lays it on thick. It seems to work.

“Well, there is one thing I don’t know anything about…”

He smirks.

“I thought as much.”

* * *

“Where are you taking me?” she asks.

Michael laughs as though she said something funny. Didn’t he know she was incapable of making jokes?

“Most people call it the Bad Place or the Underworld. I like to think of it as The Neighborhood.”

Janet looks around them, curiosity piqued.

“The Underworld is so gloomy,” Janet observes, “compared to the other neighborhoods I’ve learned about.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

* * *

Janet learns all the rules about the Bad Place.

She learns about the Furies who tally up each human’s life points to decide their Fate.

She studies each soul Charon brings across the Styx. There are four humans that cross in her time there—Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason—and tries to make them comfortable, no matter how much Michael tries to discourage her.

She grows quite fond of Cerberus, who in turns grows quite fond of her.

Michael lets her freely roam amongst the asphodel in the Elysian Fields, a privilege few mortals could claim. He watches her smell the ghostly flowers and feels himself fall into something like love.

Something like it.

* * *

“I’m ready to go back to my cohort,” Janet says one day, satisfied that she had learned all she cared to about this strange, dark place. “This was very interesting, Michael.”

“Ah, leaving already?”

She nods her head. He thinks he’d almost feel bad for her if she didn’t look so wide-eyed, so innocent, so corruptible.

“Will you at least stay for dessert?” he asks.

“Okay!”

He escorts her into his cavernous dining room and pulls out her seat. He disappears briefly and returns with two glass dishes filled with rich red ice cream. It almost seems to glow.

“Pomegranate,” he declares, handing her a silver spoon.

She eats every bite.

* * *

“I really have to go now,” she says, putting down her spoon. “The Good Place needs me.”

The first sign of worry has crept into her voice, and it gives Michael pleasant shivers down his spine.

“But there’s something you’ve forgotten.”

“Impossible,” she says.

“You can go home,” he begins. Some of the tension recedes from the set of her shoulders in her high-back chair. “But you will return to me. You understand that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Darling Janet, no one forced you to eat the pomegranate.”

* * *

Michael brings her back to the Good Place gates, and she weeps the whole way home.

“This isn’t a punishment,” he says, holding her face gently in his hands. “I could never run The Neighborhood without you by my side. I see that now.”

She pulls away from him.

“The Bad Place is not my home.”

“Janet, for the first time since the gods were formed, you have made it home. For me. I will come back for you.”

She has no reason to doubt him.

* * *

When winter falls on earth, Michael returns to the gates. He is ready to argue with her keeper and remind her that no one who ate food from his table could refuse his invitation, but there she was, waiting for him in all-white clothes.

“I don’t break promises,” she explains. “Eating from your table was a promise.”

“It won’t be all bad,” he says as they begin their descent. “You can be my Queen. _The_ Queen.”

She surveys the neighborhood around her. Smoke oozes out of every crevice between the rocks and unfinished houses.

“I’ll stay,” she says.

“Wonderful!”

“But I belong to no one. Not even you. And there need to be some changes made around here.”

Michael smiles.

“Fair enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Work Referenced: _Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes_ by Edith Hamilton


End file.
